$4.2 Million Awarded by DOE for 14 High Performance Computing for Manufacturing Projects

The Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $4.2 million for 14 High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) projects. The projects will have access to the supercomputing resources at DOE’s National Laboratories. The program is aimed at recognizing cost savings in energy usage in the manufacturing sector to bolster U.S. manufacturing competitiveness.
 
HPC4Mfg is housed under DOE’s High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) Institute, along with the High Performance Computing for Materials (HPC4Mtls) program. Both the HPC4Mfg and HPC4Mtls programs are funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE’s) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) and the Office of Fossil Energy (FE).
 
DOE’s National Laboratories host nearly one-third of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, making the HPC4Mfg program highly desirable for industry researchers and innovators to test and accelerate their innovations. In addition to having access to DOE’s supercomputers and other resources, each of the 14 selected projects will receive $300,000 to support the work being done at the National Laboratories. Each of the 14 project teams are required to have at least a 20% industry match to the federal funding received. 
 
Four of the awardees were selected from the winter 2020 special funding opportunity, and all four of the selected project teams are affiliated with a Manufacturing USA Institute. 
 
Selected projects from the winter 2020 special funding opportunity:

• CHZ Technologies, LLC will partner with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to use high performance computing (HPC) to deepen understanding of material transport, heat transfer, phase-change, and chemistry in the Thermolyzer™ technology that converts waste hydrocarbon materials into fuel gas and saleable byproducts. CHZ Technologies is affiliated with Manufacturing USA®’s Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation.
• ESI North America, Inc. will partner with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to use HPC resources to develop a data-driven approach to link features of material and manufacturing processes to the mechanical properties of thermoplastic composite parts. ESI North America, Inc. is affiliated with Manufacturing USA®’s America Makes.
• Materials Sciences LLC will partner with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to combine recent advances in topology optimization-based design, HPC, and additive manufacturing technology to develop high pressure and temperature heat exchangers. Materials Sciences LLC is affiliated with Manufacturing USA®’s America Makes.
• Raytheon Technologies Research Center (RTRC) will partner with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to use HPC-based phase-field simulations along with experimental validation to design novel titanium (Ti) alloy compositions for additive manufacturing to potentially replace currently-used wrought Ti alloys. RTRC is affiliated with Manufacturing USA®’s Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation. 
  Projects selected for the 2020 spring funding opportunity:

• Ford Motor Company will partner with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to improve part-scale modeling of laser powder bed fusion to improve car part quality and reduce scrap rate.
• In collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Futamura Group will accelerate development of next-generation recyclable cellulose-based packaging materials.
• General Electric, GE Research will partner with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to improve ceramic matrix composites for aviation by using advanced computational fluid dynamics and modern data analytics to rapidly develop a high-fidelity chemical vapor infiltration kinetics model.
• Machina Labs in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will develop performance-informed aluminum sheet metal processing for bending and reducing springback for aerospace and automotive applications.
• The Procter & Gamble Company and Sandia National Laboratories will collaborate to identify process parameters to efficiently and effectively utilize raw materials and reduce energy consumption in the dewatering/drying of random foam and structured papers.
• Raytheon Technologies Research Center will collaborate with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop multiphysics and machine learning optimization algorithms to upscale microwave-assisted plasma technology to an industrial level.
• Raytheon Technologies Research Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory will address the need to optimize microwave-enhanced manufacturing of ceramic matrix composites.
• In a multi-lab partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Rolls-Royce Corporation will use HPC to study heat transfer coefficients between the quench oil and solid-state components in the quench heat-treatment processes for gas turbine parts.
• Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America will partner with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to improve understanding of the relationship between properties in specific solid electrolytes for improved performance of solid-state batteries.
• VAST Power Systems, Inc., Argonne National Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will continue their partnership in a Phase 2 project, which seeks to increase the number of simulations to improve the efficiency of VAST’s combustors.